Sold for £600,000: a 1968 Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada

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If history is written by the victors, as some clever person once said, then the car pictured here provides a very good example. Ferrari is a name known by every human on the planet, other than those that spend their days firing blowdarts at monkeys. Bizzarrini, on the other hand, is familiar only to people who are so deeply into cars that they think it normal to refer to them by their factory code names. In the big book of motoring history, then, Ferrari is a cover star, while Bizzarrini is a footnote.

An insider name; the 1968 Bizzarrini

The man who gave his name to the car pictured here spent several extremely productive years in the late 1950s as Ferrari’s chief engineer. Giotto Bizzarrini was behind some of the greatest cars ever to come out of Maranello, like the 250 GTO – a car so highly prized that when one goes on sale now, they sell for superyacht money.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Ferrari was dominating sportscar racing – with a very important technical role played by Bizzarrini. Behind the scenes, however, things were not so good, with several senior employees unhappy about the behaviour of the boss’s wife. Although Laura Ferrari had no clearly defined role, she was increasingly involved in company affairs. Her abrasive manner caused such tension that eventually a group of senior staff presented Enzo Ferrari with an ultimatum: either your missus goes, or we go.

Giotto Bizzarrini was one of Ferrari's most esteemed designers

Enzo Ferrari may have had a more diplomatic manner than his wife, but he was not a man to be threatened and he told them exactly where they could shove their ultimatum. In what became known as the Great Walkout of 1961, five senior employees – including Bizzarrini – left the building never to return. This left a lot of talent looking for work, and they immediately began a push to beat Ferrari at its own game. As Bizzarrini himself put it: “I started with the idea of the 250 GTO and set about trying to improve on it.”

The 1968 Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada; a product of the Great Walkout of 1961

Bizzarrini worked on a number of GT cars, some badged as the Iso Grifo, and others that bore his own name. The Bizzarrini Strada, the car pictured here, was powered by a Chevrolet V8 mounted far back in the engine bay to give optimum handling balance, and had enough power to get close to 180mph. In its day it really was the ultimate evolution of the road car.

As well as making 100 or so of these fantastic road cars, Bizzarrini also began to have some success on the race track. But financing the production of both road and racing cars is never easy, and Bizzarrini ran out of money, filing for bankruptcy in 1971. As for Ferrari, well, things have gone pretty well for them ever since.

So while the Bizzarrini Strada may just be a footnote, it is a rather wonderful one that deserves higher billing. And compared to the Ferrari GTO, it is a bit of a bargain.